Going
to aim for a few small updates this week since I am a little
scattered between having just held a birthday party for my husband,
looking into renting a better studio space, and some family issues
here at home. I'll be treating you to a few nice images in these
updates, and be promoting another photographer with one of them.
Today
I want to discuss how to work with colors. Not in terms of how to
pair things in an image, but how to shoot for an emotional impact by
using the colors inherent in a setting. This will be a very visually
in depth process, so I will only touch on a few emotions and the best
way to communicate them in color. This will be a post of strictly my
own work, though the concept is not at all something I lay claim to
as an original concept; many books, blogs, and other works exist
based on this topic.
If
you follow traditional thinking, water is an emotional element
because it is so closely related to all life. We emerge from water
through the process of birth, we require water to survive must faster
than food, indeed we even loos what when we feel the strongest of
emotions (both joy and sorrow). So it should be no surprise that
water is often an essential element of using color to transmit
emotion; water is naturally blue. Using blue and purple shades are
an obvious progression and can make a basic shot even more
commercially presentable.
This
photo was a lucky catch while on a vacation with my parents and an
ex-boyfriend of mine about four years ago. I point out that there
was a UV filter placed on the camera for this, so it did tint the
shot slightly, but only enough to prove my point. Below is the shot
taken just prior; this time without using a filter and the default
settings and basic white-balance. Just looking at the two quickly,
it is simple to tell how there is a dramatic feel to the filtered
image.
The
lesson I want you to take from this is simple, editing is not always
required, but can enhance an image to the perfect level to make a
sale. In this case, I am discussing non-portrait images, but the
same rule applies there too. If you can frame, light, and pose well,
the image will simply need to be uploaded or printed. And for now, I
leave you with a few more shots where a slight addition or filtering
of color has an obvious effect on the outcome.
